Tuesday, May 12, 2009

Peanut Butter Cups

I've had homemade chocolate peanut butter cups on my mind for awhile now and I finally made some. It was Enrique's birthday and he really likes Reese's so it was a perfect oppurtunity. This post is where I first got the idea and I used the recipe there to form my own (very similar) recipe. They were very easy to make and turned out pretty well. They didn't taste exactly like Reese's, but that's okay. I was kind of expecting them to but at the same time it wasn't necessarily the goal and they were still good.Ingredients1 11.5 oz. bag of milk chocolate chips (about 1 3/4 cups)1/2 cup smooth peanut butter*1/4 cup maple syrup1 tspn vanilla extract1 tspn saltAdditional Supplies24 mini cupcake liners24 capacity mini cupcake pan (you could probably do without this but it makes things easier)DirectionsFill the cupcake pan with liners. Melt chocolate chips in sauce pan over very low heat, stirring frequently. Spoon about a teaspoon of melted chocolate into each cupcake liner and spread out if needed to cover the bottom of each cup. Refrigerate in the pan. In a bowl, combine the peanut butter, maple syrup, vanilla, and salt and mix thoroughly. Once the chocolate in the fridge has hardened (about an hour) remove and add a bit of the peanut butter mixture, about 1 heaping teaspoon per cup, evenly distributing all of it. The peanut butter should be pressed down enough to give room for a final chocolate layer on top. Add the remaining chocolate layer (re-heat chocolate if needed). Refrigerate again until firm, about an hour.*A note about the peanut butter: The amount of maple syrup and salt added to the PB depends on how sweet/salty it is to begin with, so more or less of these ingredients may be needed depending on the peanut butter used. For this recipe, I used organic MaraNatha "No Stir" creamy peanut butter, which is salted and just lightly sweetened.